Don’t make these common marketing mistakes

Don’t make these common marketing mistakes

By Iestyn Page, head of digital advertising for Newsquest Wales & South West

Recently I have found myself meeting businesses who are looking to improve their online marketing but have been misguided on the strategy that would suit their needs.

Whether you’re a small or large business you could spend hours implementing a marketing strategy, or a large portion of your budget for a marketing tactic but generate little results without truly understanding where you may be going wrong. Ensure that your next campaign will be successful by following these few crucial tips:

1. I have a website, so people can find me, I don’t need to spend on online marketing

No matter the size of your business, if you want to reach potential consumers, you need to have regular visitors to your website. Your website provides the foundation for your online presence. It lets people know what products or services your business offers, where you’re located, and gives them a way to contact you. Businesses often discard the importance of having an online marketing strategy to work for their website, it is like having a house without any way of getting there. Google search alone has more than 1.17 billion users and it also gives you a place to advertise your business from – your google ads and display ads are most effective when they link to a relevant page on your website.

2. Not advertising where your target audience is

Digital marketing gives you an abundance of online channels at your fingertips, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those channels are right for your business. It is best to decide where your target audience is spending the majority of their time online, and what marketing tactic would be the most effective at reaching them.

Facebook has become the most commonly-used platform since it is applicable to almost any business and is a great way to reach most target audiences. However, Facebook has recently announced updates to its news feed algorithm that may impact your business on Facebook if you rely only on an organic presence. In order to perform well on Facebook, you now need a paid and organic approach. Now it is even more important to create visual posts which will connect more to the user rather than brand interests. Due to this change, businesses need to prioritize responding to comments and mentions since that will impact what content will be shown in a user’s news feed.

Another investment that is a no-brainer is paid search advertising coupled with SEO. You know that your target audience is using search engines like Google to discover new businesses, so it’s important that your business is appearing on the search engine results pages. A strategy that combines search advertising with SEO can help you gain visibility in multiple places on the page, which can increase the likelihood that searchers click to visit your website.

3. Not knowing what marketing is driving leads

If your business were to implement a new marketing strategy, how would you see how well it did? Without a system for measuring the effectiveness of your marketing, you can’t truly know what’s working for your business. Tracking leads is a great first step in determining which marketing tactics are driving revenue for your business, and lead management software provides a simple way to do this.

Lead management software can also help you narrow down each marketing tactic by responding to leads faster, manage contacts and prospective leads, and give you an idea of which marketing gets you the leads you want so you are able to invest more in what is working for your company.

Search engines and social media platforms are always changing their algorithms, so it is good to always have a strategy and commit to tracking progress. Understanding where traffic is coming from while also utilising lead management software can be the key to taking your business that much further.

While online channels change and develop, it is important to adapt your marketing strategies to reach consumers in the appropriate way. Learn more about lead management, and get in touch with myself if you would like to learn more about how we can help you run your digital marketing campaigns.

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